TRAI seeks comments on how to fight spam

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Wednesday issued a consultation paper seeking feedback on regulations and measures to proactively detect spam messages and calls, and how to stop proliferation of identified spam through the system.
The regulator has also asked if telcos should have the power to fine registered entities that violate the regulations. Comments can be submitted until September 25 and counter comments until October 9.
On August 20, the TRAI had directed all access providers to migrate all telemarketing calls, starting with 140 series, to an online distributed ledger technology (like blockchain) platform by September 30.
It also said that from September 1, telcos will be prohibited from transmitting messages that contained URLS, APKs (Android Application Package), OTT (over-the-top) links or call back numbers which are not already whitelisted. This means that only vetted links (to websites or apps) will be allowed in official SMSs from regulated entities such as banks and insurance companies when they use SMS headers (such as VM-HDFCBK, JK-NSESMS, etc.) allotted to them by TRAI. These two directions, issued last week, were finalised in a meeting of the joint committee of regulators in June.
Telcos, however, told TRAI that it is not possible to implement these directions by the end of August as creating whitelists of principal entities, URLs, APKs, and sharing it with other telcos will take time, an industry expert said.
“It is complicated and involves too many parallel activities,” the person cited above said.
TRAI has sought opinions on whether the different types of messages and calls given in the Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulation need to be re-categorised, and if the headers (sender IDs) should also be reformatted accordingly.
For instance, right now, in the header AD-HDFCBK, A means that Airtel is the originating service provider, D refers to the licence service area (Delhi in this case), and HDFCBK is the header assigned to HDFC Bank (principal entity).
TRAI wants to know if AD should be removed so that all messages from HDFC Bank are clubbed together, and if a suffix denoting service, promotional, or government messages should be added to the header.
It also wants to know how explicit consent should be taken, if at all, for robocalls and auto dialer calls for commercial communications. Feedback has also been sought on the efficacy of the redressal process for customers’ complaints, and what measures service providers should take to make reporting spam easier.
Last week, TRAI directed telcos to ensure all their lists are “scrubbed” as per regulations by September 30. It means that telcos must ensure consumers have opted to not receive particular kinds of messages or content templates, those must not be delivered to them. It also directed telcos to ensure that from November 1, messages sent by principal entities must be traceable and when the chain of telemarketers is not defined or does not match, the messages should be rejected.